Facebook: The 1902 edition

It seems Facebook is older than we first thought… (Picture: britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/PA)

It was a time before clicking the ‘like’ button on a picture of a cat that looked like Hitler became de rigeur.

But while the Edwardians thought a social network was a list of suitors you took to a ball and the selfie was something your nanny said made you blind, they already had Facebook, it seems.

A newly discovered report from 1902 shows Face-book was already a popular parlour game for the genteel ladies and gentlemen of the time.

It included sharing profile pictures, albeit hand-drawn squiggles signed by the party guests in an album.

The lower-tech version came to light in a newspaper clipping unearthed by the British Newspaper Archive.

But it seems not to have been widlly different in concept from its modern-counterpart, launched ten years ago.

It was used to pass the time in country houses and the Western Times report notes it was a great source of amusement with the ‘worst drawings often being the best entertainment’ – just like sharing those blurry party photos.

Amy Sell, an archive researcher, said: ‘It’s surprising just how closely the ‘Face-book’ of 1902 reflects what we use today. History certainly does seem to repeat itself.’

However, Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook incarnation certainly surpasses the 20th century version in popularity – it has 1.2billion users.